Musician and guitarist Daron Malakian of System of a Down fame recently shared his story of filling in for the iconic Metallica guitarist James Hetfield.  Blabbermouth reports that Malakian shared the story on the podcast Tetragrammaton, where he also discussed waht shapes him as an artist and what he listens for in metal. During the show, he reminisced on July of 2000, where he found himself covering for Hetfield after he was injured in a jet skiing accident.

Malakian stated how when he has started guitar when he was in his teenage years, joining friends to play songs in their dad’s garage, including many covers of Metallica. He mentions other bands whose music helped him to learn as a guitarist, including Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Slayer, but said his friends primarily played and enjoyed Metallica to the point that Malakian was very familiar with the songs. Later, System of a Down attended the Summer Sanitarium Tour as the opener. At the time, only the band’s self-titled album had released. “We’re the first band,” Malakian said. “Nobody knows us.”

Malakian goes onto say during a show, news of Hetfield’s injury had broken, but the show hadn’t been canceled. After the bands played, Metallica went on stage alongside members of Korn, and “they kind of played like this Cheech & Chong cover song or something. They didn’t know what to do, because James wasn’t there.” In the confusion, Malakian told his tech to speak to Metallica’s tech to inform them of his familiarity with their work. Afterwards, he was brought over to meet with the band. “I’d never met Metallica before,” he continued. “And I’m telling you, Metallica was the first concert I ever went to in my life. I was a huge Metallica fan. So next thing you know, I go on the other side of the stage. I get handed a Les Paul; I think it was one of Kirk Hammett’s Les Pauls.”

“And they’re, like, ‘All right. Go.’ 60,000 people,” Malakian laughs. “Yeah. 60,000 people. I’m in my after show. I am wearing Lakers fucking sweats. I’m not even ready to get on stage. I’m wearing a white tank top and Lakers sweats, and I just completely was there just watching Metallica . Next thing you know, I get handed a guitar and they go, ‘Go.'” In the interview, Malakian continued to stress not only System’s relative obscurity at the time, but his own youth, being 22 years old. He continues,  “they put me out there, and I turn and I’m, like, ‘Hey.’ It’s Lars [Ulrich], it’s Kirk, it’s Jason Newsted. They’re, like, ‘What do you know?’ I go, ‘I don’t know. ‘Master Of Puppets’.”

“‘Okay. Count it in.'”, he continues. “We’re playing fucking ‘Master Of Puppets’. I’m up there with Metallica playing ‘Master Of Puppets’ in front of 60,000 people. And I’m, like, ‘Who’s gonna sing?’ I said, ‘Fuck it. I’ll go sing.’ And I sang. And then there’s this thing that happened where in the middle of ‘Master Of Puppets’, it has this slow part. Instead of going into that slow part, they went into ‘[Welcome Home] (Sanitarium)’. And I didn’t know they were gonna do that. And we went in and we did the middle part of ‘Sanitarium’ and then came out of it and went back into ‘Master Of Puppets’. I mean, you would think we were rehearsed it, but we didn’t rehearse it. And I didn’t even know it was gonna happen. And it happened. And I’m up there and I am playing Metallica with Metallica in front of an audience where I would’ve been in the fucking cheap seats just three years ago.”

Malakian further went on to discuss being approached by Metallica to cover the next few nights, speaking with Kirk Hammett to learn tracks from the 1996 album Load and later being told he would be flying alongside the band on private jet. He continued to share more from his time on the tour, including an anecdote where fellow tourmate Kid Rock performed the vocals for “One.”